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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Glenn Beck's rally attendance again disputed? In the wake of the Jon Stewart "Restoring Sanity" rally which began as a satire event after Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally and turned into a political call to action once again, Beck's rally attendance is in the news.

CBS had reported that Beck's attendance was at 87,000 whereas other estimates had a much higher figure - some as high as 500,000.

Once again, Beck's attendance is called in to light. Stewart's rally according to CBS brought in 215,000. Does this indicate that the Comedy Central rally turnout was greater than that staged by the popular Fox News personality?

Not necessarily. We won't ever know the exact count of people who were present at the event. Furthermore, does it really even matter? What matters is that people were inspired. They were inspired by the Beck rally and were once again inspired by the Jon Stewart rally.

5 comments:

Yea really. Who cares about Jon Stewart and Colbert. Their people aren't necessarily the most intelligent group and a good 60-70% of those probably won't vote anyway. I'm sure at least 90% of the people at GB's rally would be dead before they missed voting tomorrow.

It does matter. Beck's rally did NOT cause anyone a two hour wait in line to get a ticket to get aboard the Metro trains, nor did it cause any transportation related news. The rally generated the largest number of people to ever use the train on a Saturday in the Metro's history. That alone should snuff out any "attendance" contests.

Did you go to the Beck rally? Apparently not if you don't think there were lines to get on the Metro. People were still streaming in an hour and a half AFTER the rally started due to the lines at the Metro. I see reports of only 86,000 in attendance. You would have to be a complete moron to think only 86,000 people were in attendance after looking at the pics. People were there over night to assure a good spot. Live in your bubble and believe what you like.....

According to Metro, there were 825,437 on Stewart/Colbert day and 510,020 on Beck day. Average Saturday ridership is about 350,000 (both events were on Saturday).

If you exclude the average daily riders, and assume two trips per person (one there, one back), that yields 80,010 for Beck and 237,718 for Stewart/Colbert.

This method corresponds to APL’s analysis of 87,000 for Beck and 215,000 for Stewart/Colbert. Thus, at a minimum, it seems fair to conclude from the data that Stewart/Colbert drew three times as many as Beck.